


Denial Isn't Just a River

by ScotlandEvander



Series: Over the Rainbow [28]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Celebrations, F/M, Gen, M/M, Polyjuice Potion, Time Travel, friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScotlandEvander/pseuds/ScotlandEvander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love. Something Tom was never going to understand.</p><p>Unwinding himself, he stood and crossed the small room to the bed, sitting slowly down. He stared down at Atlanta. Her back was to him, but from the tension in her shoulders that showed above the blankets, he knew she was trying to be strong and not dwell on the misfortune of Regulus Black. </p><p>“We’ll save Regulus,” Tom agreed quietly. “What must we do?”</p><p>“I have no idea. I don’t know how he dies,” Atlanta whispered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Denial Isn't Just a River

**Disclaimer: If you know it, I do not own it.**

* * *

Tom watched Atlanta’s feet as she skipped down the stairs of the Spellsmith Headquarters. She looked up from her shoes finally and used her eyes to watch where she was heading as she ambled down the road. It was a cool spring evening and it had finally stopped raining. The streets of Edinburgh were still damp from the persistent, almost never ending rainfall that occurred year round. All it did was seem to rain. More so than it did in London. 

Tom was beginning to wonder if there was any where he’d reside that wasn’t constantly besieged by rain. 

“This is somewhat annoying,” Tom remarked in Atlanta’s head. “I enjoy us being outside, but I cannot smell what you do. I must rely on my imagination, as poor as it is.” 

He dimly remembered what it smelled like after a spring rain. 

Atlanta snorted softly, but did not respond with words. He knew she wouldn’t speak, as the people on the street with her would be alarmed, as they’d simply hear a disembodied voice. 

It had taken awhile, but Tom had gotten used to the fact when he went out in public with Atlanta, no one could see her. She was not wearing an invisibility cloak, she had not cast a Notice-Me-Not charm on herself, nor had she Disillusioned herself. No, she had cast a Fidelius Charm on herself, making herself the Secret Keeper. It had taken her and Tom almost three months after entering the Spellsmith Headquarters to achieve this, but they had been successful. Atlanta was much less stressed out after no one would ever be able to find her if she did not want them to find her. Tom was simply pleased they were allowed to leave the Headquarters. While time meant little to Tom in his current state, it was so boring inside the same place day in and day out. 

“Do make sure to tell Lily I think she is an idiot for accepting Potter’s proposal,” Tom reminded Atlanta as they walked along the twisting, crooked, cobbled streets of Old Town towards the restaurant she was meeting the Marauders and Lily to celebrate the engagement (yes, they were getting married next month, but this was the first time everyone was available to get together) and the fact Atlanta was being awarded her mastery soon. 

Tom felt her silent chuckle. 

Tom remained quiet for the remainder of the trip to the restaurant. When they reached the restaurant, Atlanta pushed the heavy door and entered. She stood near the hostess stand for a moment till suddenly someone said in her ear, “Nice to see you out and about.”

Atlanta turned and flung her arms around the person. It took Tom a moment to realize the person was Sirius Black. He groaned internally. At least he couldn’t _feel_ the hug. 

Hugging. How…sentimental. 

“Come along, luv.”

Tom wondered what it looked like to others when Sirius hugged and proceeded to guide thin air across the room. Tom pondered quite a bit what it looked like when others interacted with Atlanta in public now that she was invisible. In the time since she’d cast the spell on herself, they hadn’t actually done much in public, but it still gave him endless hours of amusement when she did something unexpected. It was a wonderful afternoon when she’d been horridly bored, so she’d gone to Edinburgh Castle and proceeded to be a ghost for a few hours and scared tourists.  

Sirius led her back to a private room. 

Ah, the mutt and his friends were thinking! 

Sirius gave her a dog like grin and threw the doors open and noise burst out of the room. 

“LANTTY!!”

“LANTA!”

“ADDY!”

Atlanta was accosted by people. Tom withdrew from her eyes and settled into darkness. He could still hear what was going on, just not see it. This suited him perfectly. 

“You look good!” Lily said. 

“Let me see the ring,” Atlanta demanded, then gasped. “Oh my god! That is gorgeous! It totally matches your eyes!”

Inane chatter took over. Tom contemplated the ward they were working on. It would block people bearing the Dark Mark. It was a step up from the ward they had created for Hogwarts. Atlanta admitted she didn’t want an anti-Dark Mark ward for Hogwarts, as students still needed an education. 

Boring. 

Tom pondered the nuts and bolts of the ward that would finally earn them the status of Master. While her teacher wished to bestow it on her after she had successfully hidden herself using an altered Fidelius Charm, Atlanta instead she wanted her mastery project to be the Anti-Dark Mark ward. She wanted to make her money doing wards, so her teacher relented. 

Tom wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he realized silence had fallen. 

“Pete, who is that?” Sirius demanded. His tone alerted Tom something was amiss. Tom moved so he could see out of Atlanta’s eyes. 

Peter Pettigrew stood next to a rather short, blonde-haired, round witch who was wearing a rather deep scowl and look of annoyance on her face. It was a familiar look. The stance was also all wrong for a woman. 

“Oh, this is my date. Er, Ariel.”

“Yes. Ariel Waters,” the witch said, a drawl to her voice. 

Tom felt the atmosphere shift. Atlanta leaned over to who she was sitting next to, Remus, and whispered, “I’ll just be going. I don’t now this chick. I’ll tell Lily goodbye.”

With ease, Atlanta shifted out of the chair without moving it. She maneuvered around Remus to where Lily sat with Potter. She whispered in Lily’s ear something Tom couldn’t hear and then slowly worked her way out of the room, slipping out just as the waitress entered with another round of drinks. Tom caught Pettigrew looking rather unsettled at Atlanta’s exit. Pettigrew did not know Atlanta was invisible. The first time she had seen him after the spell she had simply shouted, “I’m Atlanta Black and I’m right here!”

He looked at her as if she happened to be insane, which wasn’t actually anything new. 

“I think that was Severus Snape under the influence of Polyjuice Potion,” Tom remarked, realizing what was familiar about the unknown person. The scowl, the stance, the way the witch scanned the room were all classic Snape. 

Atlanta stumbled and rammed into a table, which confused and upset the patrons of the restaurant, most of whom were Muggles. Atlanta righted herself and fled. She quickly darted into one of the handy, dark closes Edinburgh sported and let out a belt of a laugh. She was laughing so hard, she ended up on the ground. Since they were in an alley, Tom let himself out of her arm, materializing before her.  

“I wish I had stayed now! Just to witness that!” she chocked out between laughs. “SNAPE IN A DRESS!” 

Tom glowered at her. “Do you know what this means?”

“What?” Atlanta asked, slowly getting a hold of herself.

“HE KNOWS!”

Tom did not understand how someone with her intelligence could be so stupid.

“Oh. Yeah. Oh, no…”

“Yes. It means he’s got Peter. Or will shortly have him,” Tom confirmed. “Peter isn’t that great of a liar, so I doubt he knew his date was Snape in a dress.” 

All her amusement, cheer and joy eked out and she slumped against the wall. 

“INSERT LOTS OF CURSE WORDS HERE!”

Atlanta recently decided she was no longer going to curse, even in her creative manner, so now she simply made an announcement and allowed the listener to choose whatever curse he or she thought was needed. 

Tom inserted quite a few.  

“Did you see that?” someone called. “That ghost! It swore!”

Tom quickly darted back into Atlanta’s arm. 

“Curses,” she muttered, putting her face into her hands. “I guess I didn’t try hard enough to include Pettigrew in the past year.”

“Addy, the past year you were working on your mastery and trying to get enough money to buy a flat. Which, we will need soon and we won’t be leaving it, so it best be nice.”

Atlanta grumbled, pushing herself to her feet. She stalked off, still muttering to herself. 

“Why is Moldy Trousers so interested in you?” Tom inquired. 

It had made little to no sense to Tom, especially after finding out Moldy was _him_. He could not comprehend how he had become…that. The ideals the man held were so…pompous and skewed. What he had started out preachings were things Tom had once felt, but now he was going about the whole thing so fallaciously, Tom did not even know where to begin to point out what was erroneous. 

Atlanta and Calliope had explained his future self away as he didn’t have a grounding sense of right and wrong. Tom did thanks to Atlanta. Tom’s past self had never been introduced to emotions, morals, or empathy. He seeped himself in the vilest Dark Arts and wound up insane. 

Or he would be, according to Atlanta. Evidently at the moment he was rather lucid and not a Schadenfreude psychotic misanthropist. Moldy’s second coming was worst than his first, as any sanity he had been able to maintain before that fateful night of 31 October 1981 was lost the moment he attempted to blast the Potter’s child to smithereens. 

Idiot. 

“Calliope,” Atlanta hissed under her breath, after looking around to make sure no one was within ear shot. “I am, or will be, Calliope.”

“But why does he want her?” Tom asked.

Atlanta grunted.

“So, he thinks you are her?”

She nodded, the world going up and down rather rapidly. Tom huffed. 

“I still do not understand why we cannot alert your friends to their untimely ends,” Tom said softly as Atlanta hurried through the darkened streets of Old Town. 

“Fixed points,” Atlanta hissed under her breath as she dodged people. “They are hard to change.” 

Tom sighed deeply. He hated the theory of fixed points in time. Logically, it made no sense as Tom liked to think of time as an ever changing, ever flowing stream. Nothing in the future had yet to happen, so it could be changed in the past. Time would alter in the future around how they changed things in the present. 

Tom really wanted to change quite a few things, one being the death of Lily Evans. Tom had started really mourning her when he found out it was _him_ that killed her. He felt dirty, wrong and off kilter. Potter asking her to marry him only made Tom sad, not happy. Lily was one step closer to her own death. He was sure the sadness was his own, as Atlanta was somewhat happy for the pair. 

“They live out their final year in bliss. They love one another and produce an adorable baby, who grows into Harry. Harry, I believe, is the event that has to happen and he happens to be a wonderful person. And handles his lot in life brilliantly. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll tell Dumbledore to watch Petunia,” Atlanta had offered when Tom had first complained. “Then maybe he won’t have such a hard knock life.” 

“At least you’re FINALLY being honest with me,” Tom had shouted at her, then refused to speak to her for a month. It was somewhat difficult, as this argument had occurred while they were at Spellsmith Headquarters and working on their final project. There were only so many places Tom could hide. 

It wasn’t the first time he refused to speak to Atlanta, and more than likely not the last. He had stopped speaking to her after Calliope let the cat out of the bag. He had been avoiding thinking about what Calliope had said in the Room of Requirement when they’d been alone. He lived in denial (it was such a lovely place, really) till the day Calliope left and he could no longer avoid he,Tom Riddle, turned into Lord Voldemort. 

He refused to speak to Atlanta and lived in his cube till Atlanta took him out and told him to stop pouting. He still did not speak to her until April, when she bribed him with the Death Eater ward for Hogwarts. 

Even now, thinking about the fact he’d succumbed to her bribe made him tetchy. 

“You’re not Lord Voldemort. You have different life experiences and people in your life. I think you actually have a friend,” Atlanta had reminded him a million times. 

It was the mantra of his life now: He was not Lord Voldemort. He would never become Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort disgusted him. 

Tom Riddle had acquaintances and a friend. Lord Voldemort had minions.  

“Okay, Riddler, we’re home. Come on out,” Atlanta said, bringing Tom back to reality. 

Tom quickly exited her arm and settled in a chair near the window. He gazed out, shifting his eyesight to see magic. Sure enough, the Death Eaters were still across the street, their magic showing up brightly. 

Morons. Didn’t their _fearless_ leader teach them how to HIDE their magic? 

“You really believe Peter is a Death Eater now?” Tom inquired. 

“Yes,” Atlanta said over the noise of running water. Tom turned, looking for her. She emerged wearing her night things from the toilet, coiling her hair on top of her head. “I know he’s going to be the Secret Keeper for the Potters, tell Moldy and then frame Sirius for his crimes. Because he’s a rat.”

“And why cannot we tell anyone this information?”

“Malfoy.”

Tom made an angry noise of frustration and folded his arms tightly across his chest. 

“You do know they can see you even if they can’t see me, right?”

Tom gave her a pugnacious look and went back to gazing out the window. 

“I hate Draco Malfoy,” Tom groused. 

Her reasoning for trying not to alter the fixed points in time was for Draco’s sake. After reading every single time travel book in Hogwarts and meeting Calliope Riddle, Atlanta decided major events— the death of the Potters, the disappearance of Moldy, Sirius going off to jail— could not be altered due to the fact she theorized Draco had sent himself back to his eleven-year-old self to redo the _his_ past. Thus, the past needed to be kept as close to what Draco remembered. 

Tom thought the whole thing was ridiculous. 

“So, what are we going to do after we go into hiding? Are we going to sit around for the next thirteen years till Draco Malfoy deems to show up? If he even shows up where you think he is going to show up?”

Atlanta threw something at Tom that wasn’t spelled with her magic, so it went right through his head and hit the window. He glowered at her, crossing his legs and arms tightly to illustrate how irritated he currently was. 

“No. We’re going to invent spells,” Atlanta said, crawling into her bed. “Save lives of the little people. Be the hero of the story.” 

Tom remained in his chair. He usually slept in the bed next to Atlanta (as he grew tired for some reason that neither could figure out). He had been “sharing” a bed with Atlanta since he’d come into being. It seemed so…wrong when she first had suggested it. Tom was aware it made Regulus uncomfortable, which only made Tom bring it up more often than not to annoy the boy. After joking about it for so long, it didn’t seem like a big deal. 

He was too mad at the moment to go to bed. 

His movements were limited to her movements. If she went into hiding, refusing to leave her flat, Tom would be tied to the flat, as while he had his cube, he was still somewhat transparent. 

Not his idea of fun. 

Nor was allowing Lily and Potter to die. At his own hand in a twisted manner. Lily had so much to offer the world. Even though she was still in training to be a Healer, she had already developed a faster acting pain potion! 

“Fixed points, Riddler,” Atlanta said, reading his line of thinking. “I’m not going to leave everyone else to suffer their horrible fates. I have put a plan into action that will allow Remus to lead a better life and hopefully, I’ll figure out a way to get Sirius out of jail faster. And get the rat.”

“Why must Sirius go to jail?”

“Because. Harry has to go live with Petunia. Even after Moldy is gone, his followers still are at large and would be after Harry. After the Death Eaters go into hiding, we’ll get Sirius out.” 

“I don’t care about Sirius,” Tom reminded her. “I don’t _like_ him.”

She giggled. “Of course you don’t, Riddler.”

They fell silent. Tom stared out the window. He watched late night drunks stager around, giggling university students walk around in groups and other people move without a care in the world. 

“We’re going to save Reggie,” Atlanta announced, waving her wand and turning the lights off. “I have no idea how he dies, but we’re saving Reggie.”

Love. Something Tom was never going to understand. 

Unwinding himself, he stood and crossed the small room to the bed, sitting slowly down on his side. He stared down at Atlanta. Her back was to him, but from the tension in her shoulders that showed above the blankets, he knew she was trying to be strong and not dwell on the misfortune of Regulus Black.  

“We’ll save Regulus,” Tom agreed quietly. “What must we do?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know how he dies,” Atlanta whispered, rolling over to face him. She held the covers under her chin and stared at him with large eyes that glowed a little in the dark. “I only know he got cold feet and attempted to back out after he saw what Moldy was willing to do to achieve his ends.”

“And no one backs away from Moldy.”

“Exactly.”

“If you want to save him, would it not be prudent to reestablish contact?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Did you forget who is stalking me?”

“No. But, wouldn’t that aid Regulus?”

“No. Not if I want him to disappear and live.”

“So, what will we wait for?”

“Reggie to find me.”

“No one can find you except Lily, Potter, Black, and Lupin. Oh, and the rat.”

“They can see me,” Atlanta corrected. “Moldy knows where I live currently. But he can’t see me. After we leave here, no one will be able to find us. That is when we wait for Reggie.”

“So, you’ll tell no one?”

“I’ll tell Sirius and Remus. And I guess Lily.”

“Won’t they wonder why you won’t let the rat know?”

“No.”

“And not Potter?”

“Potter and I aren’t close. I doubt he’ll want to visit.”

“All right. If those three are the only ones who can find you, then how will Regulus?”

“The same way I always find him.”

Tom had no idea what she was talking about, but decided to not question her, as he noticed her eyelids getting heavy. After five minute of silence, her breathing evened out. Tom lowered himself onto his back and stared at the ceiling. 

His life was so peculiar. It was not how he ever imagined it. Then again, the life Lord Voldemort led wasn’t how Tom imagined his life turning out either. If he was honest and had to pick a life, he’d pick the one he currently was suffering through. He had his sanity, he was allowed to experiment with magic (both Light and Dark, as Atlanta had no qualms performing either as long as she wasn’t maiming or killing), learn new magic and share his knowledge with the world under a false name. While he would rather not be tied to anyone, Atlanta was not all that bad. 

Tom snorted and sneered. 

Enough being sentimental. 

He closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep. 


End file.
